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The on-off marriage of the decade is on again, possibly. Bloomberg reports that Deutsche Bank’s discredited chairman Paul Achleitner has spoken to DB’s shareholders and ‘key government officials’ about merging with Commerzbank. Nothing is confirmed, nothing is imminent, but the nuptials are becoming slightly more tangible. In the meantime, key Commerzbank traders are leaving.

The latest to escape is Brian Jensen, the London head of European corporate credit flow trading, who joined Commerzbank from Mizuho in 2015. Jensen, who made several hires after his arrival, is understood to have resigned last Friday. Insiders say he’s off to Toronto Dominion in London, where he will be building out the credit trading franchise under Mike Murphy, the Canadian bank’s European head of credit trading.

Following Jensen’s exit, Michael Reeb is understood to be the new head of credit flow trading at Commerz in London. Reeb joined only three months ago, having previously worked for Landesbank Baden-Württemberg.

In the event of an eventual merger with DB, Commerz insiders suggest the bank’s fixed income trading business is likely to be particularly vulnerable to cuts. However, the flow credit business at Commerzbank is small: there are just four financial traders in Frankfurt, four emerging market traders (two in London and two in New York) and one lone corporate bond trader left in London.

Commerzbank began moving jobs to Frankfurt well before the word ‘Brexit’ was a thing. The German bank announced it was relocating 340 London jobs to Frankfurt in 2015, of which around 80 were said at the time to be FX and bond traders. Commerz insiders told us then that structured product professionals were mostly left in London, while flow traders were being exported to Germany. Jensen’s subsequent arrival suggests things didn’t entirely go to plan; headhunters said some London traders who moved to Frankfurt subsequently left the bank due to frustration with the comparatively pedestrian set-up in the German financial centre.

Jensen isn’t the only London trader to have left Commerzbank. Arran Rowell, Commerzbank’s global head of London credit trading, quit in November 2016 and became head of credit strategy at BGC Partners. Around the same time, two of Commerzbank’s top emerging market traders – Benjamin Cuddeford and Alejandro Bonano – left for BNP Paribas and Nomura respectively.

“The best people all left,” says one London credit headhunter. “What remains at Commerzbank is just a very small outfit in terms of credit trading.”

Beyond credit trading, Commerz staff are more sanguine about their future. Many of the German bank’s structured equities salespeople and traders are already embroiled in merger talks with SocGen. The French bank made an offer for Commerz’s EMC unit (exchange traded funds (ETF) portfolio, equity derivatives and other market making businesses) in March 2018. “We’re more interested in the outcome of these talks than anything with Deutsche,” says one Commerz equities professional. “Everyone is talking about the Deutsche Bank merger though,” he adds. “It makes sense and we’re all wondering when it will happen.”

Commerzbank’s Frankfurt investment bankers are enthused about a potential DB merger. “It would make a lot of sense,” says one senior debt capital markets banker. “Germany must work on rebuilding a national banking champion that can compete against the best European and U.S. banks in all sectors.

“While Deutsche Bank has neglected its domestic market for years to prioritize its global ambitions, Commerzbank can restore its strength in Germany,” he adds. Under new CEO Martin Zielke, Commerzbank began expanding ts German business beyond its traditional strength in the Mittelstand towards larger German corporates in 2016. Martin Reuther, head of Commerzbank’s corporates and markets unit, and the man who has spearheaded the change, could yet emerge as a senior figure in any DB-Commerz merger.

In the meantime, London headhunters, say Commerzbank’s leveraged finance team is one of the more impressive jewels in its crown. “They’re an excellent mid-market leveraged finance platform,” says one London headhunter, adding that Commerzbank has around 40 leveraged finance bankers in London and around 100 more in Germany. Even so, Deutsche Bank’s business is by far the larger of the two: DB ranked second for all EMEA syndicated loans in the first quarter of 2018 according to Bloomberg, with a market share of 7%; Commerzbank came in13th with a market share of 3%.

Some observers are less certain about the wisdom of a merger of Germany’s finest. “It’s like tying two drunks together to give them more stability,” Roy Smith, emeritus professor of management practice at New York University’s Stern School of Business, told Bloomberg.

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Insiders at Exane BNP Paribas say Vincent Rouviere, head of cash equities trading at the bank, has left, “suddenly and surprisingly.”

Exane BNP Paribas declined to comment on the apparent exit and Rouviere didn’t respond to a request to clarify his position. Rouviere’s phone at BNP Exane goes through to voicemail.

His apparent departure comes after BNP was named”Best Overall Broker”, best house for “Overall Research,” and best house for “Sector Research” at this week’s Extel awards.

It’s not clear what Rouviere might be doing next. Exane insiders say he joined the bank as an intern in the 1990s before becoming head of research and then head of all cash equities.

Exane has dominated Extel’s widely regarded awards for two years, since taking the crown from Morgan Stanley. Rouviere’s apparent exit follows the introduction of MiFID II in Europe in January 2018. Although some equity researchers suggest the rules have benefited research teams, which can prove their worth now clients are paying for their services directly, the rules have coincided with redundancies across the industry in equity sales and what J.P. Morgan investment bank CEO Daniel Pinto recently described as a 25% reduction in research spending.

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“That’s how you’ll get the dolls”, said my mom.

When I was a child, my family was too poor to buy us toys. My dad’s business was struggling. My mom was juggling our resources to make ends meet. As a kid, I was unaware of this, of course. I just badly wanted those Barbie dolls. I often asked for them every time we passed by the store on the way to school, and my mom would shake her head in silence. She was sorry that she couldn’t buy the toys I wanted, but she knew there was little point saying that. Instead, she thought of a difficult challenge to solve the situation.”

“If you get a series of 10/10 grades for all 10 tests in different subjects continuously, you will get the dolls,” she said. “Even if there is one discontinuity and anything but a 10/10 – like a 9/10, the whole process will reset. That’s how you’ll get the dolls.”

My mom was smart. The tests were spaced out every few weeks, meaning it would be months before I got the dolls. As a child, I was excited though: my path to the dolls had become clear. I began working tirelessly to try and get them. I failed, tried again, failed, and tried again. I did everything I could.

This was the start of my propensity to gamify my life as a series of accomplishments.

Eventually, I got the dolls. It took over a year and, like many other games, the prize was less exciting than the process. I moved on and started playing a computer game called Age of Empire instead.

My brother is an avid gamer too. Still now, in his twenties, he spends hours every day gaming without exception. I worry he’s addicted, but a friend pointed out that games can give you a sense of achievement, which can be harder to come by in real life. Her sentences got me thinking: Weren’t my three years in banking – and my years of hard academic work to get into banking – like that too?

As a banker, I worked for perhaps the most prestigious institution. I arrived as a 21-year-old fresh graduate who was overly well paid and who felt could they achieve most things much faster than outside the banking world. It gave me a sense of achievement, and it probably kept me in banking for longer than I should’ve stayed.

The sense of achievement I got as a banker was virtual, like in gaming. The results were fast-paced, partly because of the job itself and partly because of the caliber of the institution I worked for. People trusted and respected me because of the franchise rather than because of me: I had not earned their respect.

It’s hard to stay grounded in banking though. When you work on deals worth millions and billions for years on end, it’s easy to let that go to your head – to feel you’ve achieved everything yourself and to be blown off course by winds of ego. I kept reminding myself that my achievements were a great experience, but that the magnitude of what I was doing was not a reflection of my ability nor my identity. Over time, I saw other people in banking blend their identities with the companies they were working for. Some forgot they hadn’t earned the deals they were working on themselves, and incorporated them into their self-image.

Leaving any game is hard. There are no more fast-paced, quick rewards. There is no more certainty about what it takes to move on to the next level. There are no levels. When you have to use your own ability to convince others of your worth, it is a painfully long process.

Outside of banking, you find yourself in a different reality. You are no longer in a high-speed transactional environment with spreadsheets and email replies expected every five minutes. In the real world, people don’t do business with companies; they do business with people. This requires relationship-building, which is a slow and indeterminate process.

In banking, three to six months seems like an awfully long time to close an IBD deal, but this is the shortest amount of time one can expect when closing a deal with a regular B2B client. Now that I’m running my own venture, I used to have no patience. I kept doubting myself and questioning why everything was taking so long. Then I realized that I was in reality. Here, everything takes longer, and costs more. If I want the dolls, I will need to work for months to earn them. Like in my childhood, there are no shortcuts.

When you accomplish something in a virtual world, your achievements are contained within that environment. Now that I’m outside banking – in the real world – my confidence is growing. Now, I know that if I have to start from scratch all over again, I can repeat this lengthy process and come out fine. People are doing business with me because of me: not because of a franchise or corporate machine that I represent. In life gamification, I have advanced to a new level: it’s called reality.

Mai Le was an investment banking associate at Goldman Sachs before she left to found her own venture Vietnam Inbound. Besides writing on her own blog, she also runs a cover-letter sharing community called Cover Letter Library.

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For a bank, it’s hard to imagine a more damning indictment of internal culture than having the compliance professionals who are supposed to police conduct themselves accused of acting inappropriately. This is what’s transpired at Standard Chartered.

Bloomberg reports that some of Standard Chartered’s most senior male compliance staff have been accused of behaving badly and of sexually harassing colleagues. Bloomberg says their actions reflect a “toxic work culture” that ex-J.P. Morgan CEO Bill Winters is trying – and so far failing – to fix.

The compliance accusations relate to Neil Barry, Standard Chartered’s global head of compliance, and to Matt Chapman, its global head of anti-bribery and corruption. Barry allegedly made inappropriate comments to colleagues, including approaching a woman sitting with a male colleague in a canteen and saying she belonged to him before questioning her companion’s sexuality. Chapman was investigated for altering the performance review of a woman he was having an affair with, and left the bank last year.

Bloomberg says the compliance infringements are part of a broader cultural problem at Standard Charted which includes excessive expense spending on things like karaoke nights, and bullying, racism and verbal abuse in the private bank.

Winters is doing his best to clean things up. Since April 2016, Bloomberg reports that he’s been sending a relentless battery of memos invoking staff to create a safe environment for colleagues with the hashtag #knowtherules. The bank’s general counsel has also set up a team comprised of former spies, FBI detectives, regulators and compliance officers to identify colleagues who are behaving poorly. However, this team itself has proven controversial following accusations that it exaggerated evidence, mislead witnesses and improperly documented interviews. Some employees investigated by the team have been dismissed and deprived of deferred bonuses, only to overturn the rulings following further investigations.

Separately, the Financial Times has been looking at how banks have fared since the financial crisis. The good news is that profitability has recovered. – The FT found that profits at nine of the 10 top banks were $78.4bn in 2017 compared to $75.4bn in 2007. The bad news is that banks are making these profits with 60,000 fewer staff than previously. – Since the crisis they have learned to do with far fewer human beings.

In a piece on the same topic, the FT tracks the diminution of Deutsche Bank. While the German bank was ranked second by Coalition for all its investment banking activities in 2007, it came sixth last year. Barclays too has failed to retain the advantages incurred by acquiring Lehman (it went from 10th in 2007, to 3rd in 2008 to 7th in 2017). The big winners of the post-crisis decade have been J.P. Morgan and Citi, who went from fifth and fourth to first and second respectively.

Meanwhile:

Barclays is thought to have hired Matthew Cousens, co-head of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Credit Suisse’s algorithmic trading arm. (Financial News)

Commerzbank deal: “Going forward, we view this deal one of the only ways to save Deutsche Bank.” (Bloomberg)

Executive coaching company used by Deutsche Bank is being floated for £140m ($188m). (Sunday Times)

How to have a full time job and become an internet millionaire at the same time, by an ex-employee at Tesla. (Bloomberg)

I was gaslighted in the office. (Medium)

People are urging Lloyd Blankfein to become mayor of New York. He is flattered, but uninterested. (WSJ)

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The banking industry usually has at least one of a particular type of character – the guy whose name is always in the frame for every top job going. It used to be the role occupied by Jamie Dimon, when he was at Bank One. Before that it was John Mack. Right now, it looks like Unicredit’s Jean-Pierre Mustier is the man of the moment. According to credible reports, he was offered the Deutsche Bank job but turned it down. He would surely have been the chief executive of a merged Unicredit/Commerzbank. And much of the credibility of the persistent rumours of a SocGen/Unicredit deal comes from the fact that with an unclear succession plan for Frederic Oudea after the departure of Didier Valet, SG’s former investment banking chief, it is easy to see as a “king across the water”, waiting in Milan until the time comes for him to reclaim his rightful throne.

For the foreseeable future, J-PM (he even has a good set of initials!) is going to be right up there on the executive search firms’ shortlists. So it’s worth having a look at the key episodes from his career to see what we can find out about his management style.

He learned about compliance and controls the hard way

The reason that Mustier lives in Milan rather than Paris today is that he was the executive at SocGen who carried the can for the Jerome Kerviel affair. The Delta One operation where Kerviel built up the positions was meant to report to Mustier, but it had systems which allowed the rogue trader to put fake hedge trades in to conceal his positions, and to report on a net rather than gross basis. Mustier had to step down as head of investment banking, and later left SocGen entirely when he was prosecuted by the AMF for selling SG shares while in possession of non-public information.

That’s a hard way to learn that what you don’t know can hurt you. Given that experience, it’s not surprising that Mustier would have said no to the opportunity to become responsible for Deutsche Bank, given the known problems with its reporting systems. It also might mean that we shouldn’t expect him to be interested in any roles which come up in Australia, until the Big Four Aussie banks have dealt with the compliance culture issues that are being exposed by the Royal Commission.

He wants to go big or he’ll go home

His current reign as CEO is actually the second time that J-PM has held a senior role at Unicredit. After leaving SG, he got a job as Unicredit’s head of corporate and investment banking, with a mandate to streamline the operations, cut costs and build a credible capital markets capability. He largely did this (although the divisional earnings were of course swamped by corporate loan losses). But after three years, it seems that he got tired of operating in a second tier and non-growth environment and quit, to join the private debt fund Tikehau.

What does this tell us? He’s a graduate of École Polytechnique, from a class which contained lots of highly successful bankers, and he’s ambitious. He’s prepared to fight fires and solve problems, but not indefinitely. We should expect to see him heading for roles in which there’s a clear vision for growth in the long term.

He’s not scared of unpleasant medicine

It’s no fun doing an equity capital raise at a 40% discount. Nor is it any fun to sell off twenty billion dollars worth of assets at a price below their likely fair value. That’s why most bank CEOs try to avoid doing either of these things, and to put them off as long as they can. Not J-PM. He launched the Unicredit capital issue within a few months of taking the job, and the NPL sales a year later. Comparing Unicredit’s strategy to that of other big Italian players, it’s really noticeable that Mustier has always chosen to take the pain and move on, rather than to try to hold on and hope things will get better. If he shows up at a bank which has sacred cows to slaughter, or a big problem division that’s historically been too politically sensitive to tackle, you can expect he won’t be slow to get off the mark.

There’s no particular reason to believe that J-PM has any plans to leave Unicredit, other than that people seem to keep offering him jobs. The consolidation rumours are more tangible, although it seems unlikely that any merger will happen until Italian political risk dies down. But somehow, it doesn’t feel like this is a chief executive whose plan is to see out the rest of his career in a mid tier European national champion bank. He’s worth keeping an eye on. He might be your next boss.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by actual human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t).

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Ever since John Cryan’s Strategy 2020 mooted a total shakeup of Deutsche Bank’s IT division in 2015, technology at the German bank has been in a state of flux. The exit of COO Kim Hammonds in April after her declaration that DB was the most dysfunctional place she ever worked, didn’t help matters. However, both Hammond and other ex-Deutsche tech executives seem happy in their DB afterlife.

Take Jorge Vacarini Junior, who served as Deutsche’s CIO (chief information officer) up until this May. He’s becoming the director of technology and operations at a new firm, the name of which he will reveal this week, as per his LinkedIn profile. His new role is likely to be related to the healthcare sector, according to sources. A technology veteran with more than two decades of experience, Vacarini Junior joined Deutsche in 2012 and remained there for more than six years. He headed IT production management before becoming Deutsche Bank’s CIO in the second half of 2012.

Meanwhile, Hammonds herself appears to be starting her own firm: Mangrove Digital Group. Before joining Deutsche, Hammonds served as the CIO of Boeing and as the director of Americas manufacturing operations at Dell. She also spent 16 years working for Ford as director of Manufacturing Systems for North America.

While at Deutsche, Hammonds attempted to streamline Deutsche’s sprawling IT infrastructure by reducing its multifarious computer systems down to four from over 40.

Mangrove Digital may well be an attempt by Hammond to cash on the digital transformation is all the rage. Most major banks, including Deutsche, are in the middle of the transformation process. “Right now, banks are all about hiring digital transformation specialists,” says Paul Bennie, managing director of recruitment firm Bennie MacLean. “It’s really taken off and there’s a very limited talent pool of people with the necessary combination of business expertise and technical knowledge.”

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I am that person: a sell-side guy who now works on the buy-side. I came from a big U.S. bank to a small investment firm. – A small investment firm. Not one of the big players, or the prestigious houses. Small; relatively unknown.

My firm would like to be a client of Goldman Sachs. But Goldman Sachs is not exactly busting to work with us. This is because Goldman Sachs is choosy: and we are not desirable.

Being a client of Goldman Sachs is like being a customer at a Hermès store and trying to buy a Birkin bag. 99% of the time, you will be told they are out of stock. They are not. I know, from talking to people who work there, that Hermès stores have regular deliveries of Birkin bags, but that they pick and choose who they sell them to.

For example, you’re not going to be sold a Birkin bag if you seem the sort of person who’s just going to flip it in for a profit. Nor are you going to be sold one if you’ve never made a purchase at Hermès before. The Birkin bag is something you work up to.

Goldman Sachs has historically been the same. While other banks employed armies of sales and marketing professionals, Goldman kept its sales team slim: it didn’t need to sell itself as firms wanted to be its client.

Times are changing, but this attitude at Goldman lingers. While other banks are hungry to do business with us and try to respond to our requests as soon as possible, Goldman staff take their time. Email responses can take a while. Arranging a meeting is hard. Funds still accept this. If you’re a hedge fund and you have GS as your prime broker, it means something: it’s an endorsement and that helps when you’re looking for funding.

There are downsides though. It’s frustrating to send emails that don’t elicit a response for weeks (if at all). It’s equally frustrating when meetings must be booked months in advance- surely no one is that busy?

Goldman’s attitude may need to change. Although there’s a trend for prime brokers to become more picky, there are plenty of firms out there who want our business. In Goldman’s case, being picky has worked for years but the sustainability of that approach is now being put to the test. Under David Solomon, the firm wants to focus more on highly competitive agency business, which is similar across all banks. To stand out, you need good people, good technology, and a good strategy for ensuring best execution. Goldman’s spent a long time selling Hermès bags, but as it moves downmarket, it will need a very different approach. People who have the money to buy a Hermès bag don’t relish being made to feel inadequate because they’re wearing the wrong shoes.

Clive Stafford is the pseudonym of a former salesman in an investment bank

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Among people who want to see ‘bankers’ paying painful penance for their role in the financial crisis, it’s a popular refrain to complain that the perpetrators haven’t been jailed. In the case of ex-RBS CEO Fred Goodwin with his vintage cars and £340k a year pension, this is true. But there is also someone paying dearly – and only now realizing the price.

David Drumm was CEO at Anglo Irish Bank from 2005 to 2008. After borrowing €100k in bail money from his wife’s parents, he was convicted last Friday of fraud at the Dublin criminal court. Drumm now faces what the Irish Independent describes as a, “potentially unlimited amount of jail time,” for his part in a €7.2bn fraud that resulted in the nationalization of Anglo Irish Bank in a deal that cost Irish citizens £22.4bn (€29bn).

A well known figure in Ireland, Drumm has been largely ignored by everyone else. He looks doleful in all the photos and his hands reportedly trembled when he learned the verdict last week. An accountant by training, he helped hike Anglo’s profits 70% during his first two years as CEO. Then came the financial crisis, hundreds of millions in directors’ loans and a ruse by which Anglo sent €1.2bn of its own money in a circle through Irish Life, so that €7.2bn appeared to be “customer” cash at its year end.

Drumm isn’t the only AIB banker who’s been punished: three others were jailed in 2016, but their terms of between two and three and a half years seem short compared to the 10 years or so that Drumm can likely expect.

Drumm, who has been living in Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife and two daughters, tried to declare himself bankrupt in 2010 after declaring debts of $14.3m and assets of $13.9m, but his attempt was refused. At the trial, he had no supporters on the public benches and no one but his lawyers came to speak to him after he had been sentenced. None of his family were in court for the sentencing: his wife went back to Boston for his daughter’s graduation. While life goes on for everyone else, Drumm is going down alone. His haunted expression should be a palliative for everyone who wants to see pain in the crisis perpetrators, and a warning to bankers anywhere who might feel tempted to nefarious actions.

Separately, Jamie Forese, the president of Citi’s institutional clients group (its investment bank) has a warning for anyone working in technology and operations. Forese told the Financial Times that Citi will likely half its 20,000 technology and operations staff in the next five years as machines take over. At the same time, Forese said Citi would likely hire in other areas such as sales and research: “What people are doing, the type of work being done by the human rather than the machine will change.”

Meanwhile:

Barclays is reversing its strategy of pulling out of Europe and is trying to Brexit-proof its strategy by hiring on the Continent again. (Financial News)

Perella Weinberg hired Cyrille Perard, the co-head of Goldman Sachs in France, Luxembourg and Belgium. (Les Echos)

HSBC wants to increase the return on equity at its U.S. unit from 0.9% last year to 6% by 2020. (Financial Times)

HSBC plans to invest up to $17 billion in China and new technologies. (WSJ)

Bank of America hired Larry Slaughter, the former head of M&A at J.P. Morgan as executive vice chairman as it seeks to improve its standing in European league tables. Slaughter is the third senior banker BAML hired in Europe in the past few weeks. (Financial News)

Lauren Bonner is still working for Point72 whilst suing the fund for sexism. It’s, “awkward but also not that bad.” (CNBC)

Ponzi hedge fund manager squandered millions on a Ferrari, horse racing and gambling in Las Vegas. (Daily Mail)

The hottest jobs at Microsoft involve developing an AI chip in the Azure public cloud division. (CNBC)

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Almost a decade after the global financial crisis, structured credit professionals are back in vogue at Goldman Sachs.

Goldman recently hired Omar Waly, a former director at Credit Suisse who worked in credit structuring at the Swiss bank for nine years. Waly joined the Goldman’s London office earlier this month as an executive director.

With over a decade of experience, Waly is a specialist in correlation trades, CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), and balance sheet securitisations, all of which were associated with the financial crisis in 2008.

Some of the associated products are making a comeback. Synthetic CDOs which were partly held responsible for fueling the global financial crisis are resurgent. A research report by Citigroup published in October last year predicted that the sales of such products would reach as much as $100 billion by the end of 2017 from about $20 billion in 2015.

Waly began his career in credit structuring at BNP Paribas a year before the financial crisis, after completing his post graduation in finance from Imperial College London. In the second half of 2009, he joined Credit Suisse as a director of credit structuring and headed investment solutions like repackaging and credit-linked products for nine years, before leaving the Swiss bank for Goldman. He graduated from Cass Business School in banking and international finance.

Goldman Sachs has been hiring-in executive directors and VPs to boost its business, Last month, David Solomon, the CEO in waiting at Goldman Sachs, said the bank plans to focus on flow rather than structured products as it seeks to rebuild revenues in fixed income currencies and commodities trading.

2018 is looking good for Goldman Sachs’ fixed income traders

Separately, banking analysts at KBW spoke to Ashok Varadhan, co-head of the securities division at Goldman Sachs. Varadhan told them the GS FICC division benefited from increased volatility (related to Italy, Venezuela and elsewhere) in Q2 and that it stands to benefit further as the year progresses and quantitative easing is unwound. Goldman has gained significant market share in FICC, said Varadhan, adding that this might be because of retrenchment by European banks.

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Women like big name banks. When asked which large firms they wanted to work for, in our annual survey of employers, women gave banks four of the five top slots. In fact, in the entire top ten, Google was the only non-traditional choice. The tech giant aside, there were six banks, two professional services firms, and an asset manager.

Of course, this is not the whole story. You might expect Goldman to be number one as it’s widely seen as the industry leader and has big name recognition. However, J.P. Morgan is sitting in the top spot. So what does this tell us?

Well, for starters there isn’t much in it. Competition for the no.1 slot was a close run thing. But when you look at the data, you see that Goldman does very well on, “headline,” attributes such as being an industry leader, offering a competitive salary and proving challenging work.

However, J.P. Morgan beats Goldman in a number of areas. It is seen as having a more positive organisational culture – and around 80% of women at both banks think this is important. It is viewed as offering better training and development – and, again scores highly for importance. Perhaps surprisingly, Goldman is seen as weaker when it comes to bonuses. Finally, although neither bank shines when it comes to flexible working or corporate citizenship, J.P. Morgan edges Goldman in both categories.

This is becoming something of a theme in these surveys. Banks tend not to shine when it comes the soft stuff (corporate social responsibility, flexible working, office environment, values, etc.) but employees increasingly see these areas as important – and women tend to see them as more important than men. Given that addressing these issues is often relatively easy and inexpensive, banks may well be missing a trick here, especially as employers fight to attract the best female talent.

Moving on, and the only company on this list that really sticks is Google. Its position here is indicative of several trends. One is that tech has become a genuine alternative to finance and professional services. Where once the best staff looked to the City and Wall street, now they’re considering Kings Cross and Silicon Valley.

Google is still the only tech firm in the top ten but, further down, there are others such as Amazon. So this may be the shape of things to come. In the way that many professions lost the best graduates to finance in the 00s, it may be that finance starts to lose stars to tech.

Google is interesting for other reasons too. It doesn’t score well on salary, but it’s a real stand-out in areas like promotion and training. It also does vastly better than the top two in terms of office environment and corporate culture – and this points to another factor. It’s true that working for Google is very demanding – but there’s an element of fun and creativity that no bank can match.

Finally, and perhaps rather bafflingly, Google scores quite poor on being an industry leader. As the only company on the list whose name has become a verb like “Hoover” this seems a little unfair.

Let’s move a little further down. UBS and Citi don’t do as well on the big numbers. But they are both good (or at least good by the standards of the sector) when it comes to flexible working options and corporate citizenship. HSBC scores well here too. Interestingly, BlackRock is notably lacking when comes to diversity with only a quarter of respondents viewing it as a strength of the company.

There are a few other interesting points too. One is that no firm is seen as hugely innovative or hugely lacking when it comes to innovation. The spread is small – between 61% and 76% with the majority clustered around 70%. There are a few factors like this: challenging work is another. For women, they appear to be non-differentiators. All firms do about the same.

There are some rather depressing surprises too. Less than half of women at JP Morgan attached much importance to opportunities for promotion. In fact almost twice as many said that perks such gym membership were important to them. This likely points to a grubby little secret. JP Morgan Limited has the lowest number of women in its top pay quartile and the highest number in the bottom. So perhaps the reason women don’t attach much importance to promotion is because they don’t expect to be promoted.

However, in JP Morgan’s defence it is still where women want to work most, so it must be doing something right. This apparent paradox may point to the heart of how women view working in financial services and associated industries. No one company gets it all right. Rather they all have faults. They are all traditionally male industries – and they all have a long way to go when it comes to being truly equal workplaces.

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Every ranking of the top accounting firms in the world begins the same way: PwC, Deloitte, EY and KPMG, in some order. Yet surveys and anecdotal evidence suggest that the Big Four offer a work-life balance that leaves much to be desired, despite providing a sense of prestige that keeps most accountants coming back for more. There is an alternative. Accountants who work at hedge funds say they largely enjoy the status that comes with the name of their employer but without all the long nights. The only problem: you may eventually find yourself stuck or even out of work.

Working as a hedge fund accountant is “pretty awesome from a pay and time-commitment perspective versus what you’ll be doing and making in a comparable job at an accounting firm,” said one former employee who worked at two top New York funds. “While you’re in the back office, it feels more glamorous that something similar at a non-hedge fund.”

He found the work to be more diverse than what he did earlier at traditional tax and accounting firms. Confirming trades, making payments, fixing trade bookings and even working on improving internal systems. Perks included working at a fancy office, interfacing with high-profile front-office staff and having access to proprietary software and other expensive resources, including a large support infrastructure, he said.

“We were responsible for making sure everything was booked correctly and showing correctly in P&L statements, which goes directly to the trading desk in their exposure reports, so you feel important and invested in the process and have ownership of the operations of the fund,” added another former accountant at a hedge fund. “It’s not like you’re just an unseen, forgotten schmo who occasionally clears a trade.”

And while the work can be somewhat stressful, the pay is comparable to mid-level positions at the Big Four, with both reporting starting salaries of between $80k-$90k, plus bonus, with around five years of experience. Plus, as hedge funds operate alongside market hours, the work-life balance isn’t like anything you’ll experience at the Big Four.

The downside

The biggest pain point for hedge fund accountants takes a while to sink in. You begin to compare your salary to front office colleagues rather than accountants working elsewhere. “I began to realize how I made peanuts compared to the numbers being tossed around elsewhere,” said one former accountant who’s no longer in the business. “It was like a rounding difference on the payments you are instructing multiple times a day.”

But making the jump from the back office to the front office at a hedge fund is a near impossibility, recruiters say. You’ll likely to need got get your CFA and have the enormous support from a key decision maker. “There’s enough back office stigma to make it hard to cross the border into the front office unless you #*%* someone or have big [assets],” said the other, sarcastically, who is back working in tax after getting laid off.

Meanwhile, the resume of a hedge fund accountant won’t open near as many doors as one from the Big Four, companies known for their impeccable training and the exit opportunities they provide. Being an accountant at a hedge fund, particularly when working with proprietary software, can limit future options. Plus, the industry is shrinking. Fewer and fewer hedge funds have opened for six straight years while hedge fund closures have increased for three straight years.

The pros of working in the back office of a hedge fund are immediate, but they seem to be outweighed by the eventual cons.

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Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by actual human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t).

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It was always inevitable that success in the fintech sector would be driven more by the “fin” side of things and less by the “tech.” This is, after all, a regulated industry where moving fast and breaking things is not so much the route to success as the route to legal trouble. But 2018 is beginning to really look like the year in which big fintech starts to mature, and the career options begin to look … a lot more boring?

Just look at the fintech success stories from four years ago. The former disruptors are now entering into the mainstream. Zopa is getting a banking licence and will be providing deposits while taking credit risk on its own balance sheet. Transferwise, once a vocal critic of the international payments oligopoly, has joined the APACS Faster Payments Service in the UK. Revolut, which has a reputation for working its staff harder than banks, now has two million users and is launching its own commission free trading service.

Fintech firms used to be the place to go if you wanted to escape the corporate experience. Not any more. Before long, FinTech firms are going to be stalwarts of the BBA and AFME. Even the latest high-profile VC-funded launch in the space is Nick Ogden’s ClearBank , a clearing bank for small businesses.

How does this affect the careers on offer? It is likely to mean that the industry will be more oriented toward stable infrastructure. Morever, while none of these companies are “ex-growth”, they all appear to be moving on to a stage of development at which growth is not their only priority, in both business and technical terms. They are also moving toward the mainstream, and inevitably taking on mainstream language and business habits. We can even see this in the job titles – while Crowdfunder is still looking for a “Marketing Genius” on its careers page, the somewhat more mature Crowdcube is looking for a .”Head of PR”.

The incursion of plain old finance into FinTech careers is not going to happen overnight; the sector is still currently dominated by smaller startup firms, and the blockchain phenomenon is by no means over. But it is noticeable that even though the “top jobs” identified by Hays are mainly in exciting areas of AI and quant analysis, they also note that “Culture champions” (recruiters and HR) are right up there too, and one of the hottest roles this year has been for innately dull-sounding data protection officers.

Even a year ago, it was being noted that “Financial reporting manager” jobs were as hard to fill in FinTech as “software engineer”. This is the slightly depressing truth about the industry – successful companies grow, and as they grow, they need to be managed.

The ratio of rock stars and ninjas to compliance officers and financial analysts can only head in one direction. Ultimately, every industry ends up reinventing the middle manager, even if she has a Web 2.0 job title. FinTech, and its career structure, is eventually going to have to leave the sandbox and move up to Big School.

Dan Davies, is a senior research advisor at Frontline Analysts and a former banking analyst at Cazenove, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)

““

Not often will you see a hedge fund billionaire badmouth capitalism and take on the issue of income inequality. It just begs for calls of hypocrisy. So consider Paul Tudor Jones fearless. The hedge fund manager and philanthropist suggested that the current form of capitalism that’s being practiced is rather archaic – both from a social responsibility perspective and, in a way, on a macroeconomic level.

Speaking to CNBC, Jones said that economist Milton Friedman’s oft-cited pillar of capitalism – that the social responsibility of a company is to improve its profits – is outdated. “Capitalism may need modernizing,” he said, pointing to the ever-widening wage gap and recent tax law changes. But Jones wasn’t talking entirely from an altruistic vantage point. The head of Tudor Investment Corp. and the Robin Hood Foundation sees corporate social responsibility, including fair wage practices, as a potential predictor of a good investment as well.

Jones’ mini media tour highlighted the launch of a socially-conscious ETF from Goldman Sachs that’s based on a series of metrics that he and others developed to help identify companies that follow more of a moral compass, starting with employee pay. His research says these corporations represent better investment opportunities than those that are seemingly only concerned with profitability.

Jones’ comments come a year after fellow hedge fund titan Ray Dalio suggested that income inequality is a sign of societal and economic weakness that can lead to populism and, eventually, political extremism. Both investment gurus cited near-century old historical examples advocating for the mending of the wage gap for reasons beyond simple fairness and equality. The problem may be broader than that, both politically and economically.

Elsewhere, BlackRock is embedding itself further into the software industry with a new iteration of its Aladdin risk management platform that can double as a lead generation tool of sorts. Aladdin for Wealth, designed to help brokers and investment managers analyze risk in client accounts, should provide BlackRock with the opportunity to sell more of its own funds, according to Bloomberg.

Detractors say that the widespread adoption of Aladdin, already utilized by many large asset management firms, may lead to a form of groupthink that can result in systematic risk. If BlackRock suddenly falters, so could all the funds that rely on its once-proprietary software, goes the theory.

Meanwhile:

Credit Suisse has been actively cutting senior M&A bankers in Europe with a primary focus on its London office. (Bloomberg)

Robert Steininger, RBC’s head of healthcare investment banking team in the U.S., has left the firm. The news comes just a few days after the firing of his boss, U.S. investment banking chief Blair Fleming, who failed to disclose an improper relationship with an employee. Steininger left before Fleming was let go, however. (Bloomberg)

Here’s Lloyd Blankfein’s pitch to tech students on why they should join Goldman Sachs. Interestingly, he backed off his proclamation that Goldman is a tech company. (Yahoo Finance)

UBS is considering adding headcount within its family office operations in Asia as it concentrates more resources on high-net worth clients. (Bloomberg)

Goldman Sachs just invested millions in an AI startup that helps bankers and lawyers analyze complex contracts. (Business Insider)

Nomura is investing in its global markets business with a focus on equities, foreign exchange and structured lending. (Business Times)

Tech researchers have developed machine-learning software to help predict the winner of the World Cup. Germany and Spain are your favorites. (Tech Review)

Here’s a list of the medium income in every U.S. state, adjusted for cost of living. (Money)

Raccoon scales UBS tower in Minnesota. (Guardian)

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““

It’s turning out to be a bad year to be a high ranking investment banker in Europe. As costs are cut and capital markets deals remain low, banks are doing away with some of their most senior and expensive staff.

As the chart below shows, investment banking division (IBD) staff have been relatively immune to the axe. While front office fixed income professionals globally have had their numbers reduced by over a fifth in the past five years, IBD staff have been pruned by just six per cent over the same period. Action is now needed: in the first quarter of 2018, research firm Tricumen said that UBS, Barclays, HSBC, BNP Paribas and Credit Suisse all had an issue with high costs in their investment banking divisions.

This might be why it emerged yesterday that Credit Suisse has let go of around 26 managing directors and directors in the past five months, mostly in London. It may also explain reports of involuntary senior exits at HSBC, and UBS and Barclays – to say nothing of the pain being inflicted upon the investment banking division at Deutsche Bank.

With Barclays cutting over 100 MDs and directors in January, Credit Suisse letting go of 26 Ds and MDs of its own, and some inside Deutsche Bank talking of “carnage” in large teams like healthcare as the bank retrenches from non-core sectors, merges teams and jettisons its head of corporate finance, senior bankers at European banks are getting the fixed income treatment., If you’ve been used to (comparative) job security, it’s going to be a shock.

Costs aren’t the only issue. In ECM, revenues are also looking weak. Figures from Dealogic show EMEA announced equity capital markets deals by value at $88bn this year, down from $126bn in 2017. In debt capital markets, deals are on a par with last year. Only in M&A are they up by a healthy 82%, helped along by the likes of Comcast’s $22bn bid for Sky.

The latter may help explain why, even as European banks are cutting IBD staff in Europe, U.S. banks are busy adding them. This month, Bank of America hired Larry Slaughter, the former co-head of European M&A at J.P. Morgan. In May, it hired Séverin Brizay, UBS’s former head of M&A for the same region., plus an ex-UBS MD for its EMEA financial sponsors team. In February, BoFA hired the former head of Morgan Stanley’s financial institutions group. The additions at BAML come after Jefferies poached two of the bank’s EMEA staff as it builds its energy and natural resources division.

Investment banking headhunters say they’re busy with new hires, but that there are plenty of senior staff out of the market. “Directors and managing directors are expensive, and if they’re not producing now they never will,” said one, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Banks are clearing out the dead wood, giving younger and smarter people a chance to move up,” he added.

““

If you work in a front office job in an investment bank and you’re worried about being displaced by intelligent machines, the former head of macro structuring at Citigroup would like to be your friend.

Huy Nguyen Trieu left Citi in 2016. For a markets professional (he spent 13 years in financial engineering at SocGen and RBS before becoming an MD and head of macro structuring at Citi), he’s done a exemplary job of moving on. A fintech fellow at London’s Imperial College and mentor at fintech accelerator Level 39, Nguyen Trieu is both fintech guru and entrepreneur. And he’s bringing his new identity to bear on the issue of long term employability in investment banks.

“If you’re a flow trader, you will know that a lot of what happens on the trading floor has already been automated,” says Nguyen Trieu. “You will also see that a lot more can be automated in future. If you want to keep your job, you need to question both what your role will be in this automated future, and what impact artificial intelligence will have on your area of the business.”

The threat is real. Banks are cutting costs by investing in technology and are eliminating human beings. Goldman Sachs famously had 600 cash equities sales traders manning the phones in 2000; now it has two. Nguyen Trieu says he knows a team that previous employed 140 people in 2010; now there are four algorithmic traders managing 70% of the same book.

As automation continues apace, the next wave of superannuation is likely to be as destabilizing as the first – except this time banks are coming after compliance professionals, fixed income market makers, finance teams, and anyone whose job can be mapped onto an algorithm. Every bank has a machine learning team tasked with the application of artificial intelligence to everything from trading to client communications. At Credit Suisse’s most recent investor day, CEO Tidjane Thiam said the bank plans to eliminate 45% of its 450 trading floor “control” roles using automation. Depending upon who you speak to, the outcome will be varying degrees of brutality.

But what happens if you’re just a trader or a compliance professional who isn’t versed in the new reality? Do you sit there meekly, waiting to be taken out? Do you become the sort of relationship holder who can’t be displaced by code?

There is a third way. Nguyen Trieu says you need to transform yourself into the sort of person who helps banks apply the new technologies. You need to become the facilitator.

“It’s very difficult now to find people who understand technology and finance,” he says. “This is the new space – if banks are to automate, they need an understanding of both the business processes being automated and how the new technology can be applied to them. There’s a huge shortage of people who can do this.”

As an entrepreneur, Nguyen Trieu has spied an opening. He’s devised a £500, 15 hour, online course to teach non-tech professionals in banking about AI. The intention isn’t to make compliance managers and rates traders into AI programmers. It is to give them sufficient understanding of AI to appreciate how it can be applied to their area of finance and to get jobs working with the new technologies or advising on their evolution. Lecturers include the chief data officer at Standard Chartered, the co-head of venture investing at Citi, and the ex-Goldman Sachs equities analyst who founded Behavox, an intelligent compliance monitoring system.

Will 15 hours really be enough to secure your future finance career? Nguyen Trieu obviously thinks so. However, that the course even exists is telling in itself. – After leaving the trading floor, Nguyen Trieu has spotted an opportunity to monetize the angst of his former colleagues. “If you don’t start using the new tools, you’re going to be obsolete,” he warns. If that’s not enough to scare you into spending £500, you clearly have nerves of steel.

““

Goldman Sachs is making a major push into retail banking with the planned expansion of Marcus, its digital consumer lending and finance business launched in 2016. David Solomon, the assumed successor of Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, suggested last week that Marcus may move beyond personal loans and deposits and into mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and even insurance. Goldman also recently acquired personal-finance app Clarity Money and is said to be planning an expansion into Europe with operations in the U.K. and Germany.

The expected growth of Marcus will be accompanied by many job vacancies that people typically don’t associate with Goldman Sachs, mostly due to its lack of a retail presence over the years. Marcus isn’t a brick-and-mortar bank, so its current customer-facing employees are loan and savings specialists who don’t actually face customers. They work in a call center environment. As such, Marcus has opened the door to people who may have wanted to work at Goldman Sachs but who don’t have the typical resume of most analysts.

Getting a job as a loan and savings specialist doesn’t require a college degree, according to current job postings on Goldman’s career site. You’ll need at least a GED or a high school diploma along with two years of experience working in customer service and a background in financial services. However, a thorough search of LinkedIn profiles of current specialists show that most do have their bachelor’s degree, yet specific experience working in banking doesn’t appear to be a must.

One recent hire has worked for several years in various customer services roles as well as in cosmetology and as a professional face painter, but never worked at a financial services company. Another worked at big box store and in beverage sales before joining Marcus, while a third was previously a dog groomer before working for less than a year in a customer service role, also outside of financial services. Some do have experience in retail banking, mostly as bank tellers.

Goldman Sachs didn’t respond to inquiries about the qualifications needed to become a loan and savings specialist or the expected pay range. These roles are currently based out of Goldman’s office locations in Utah and Texas, where hiring is rampant.

On the surface, the bank appears to be very inclusive with its retail brand. The official name is “Marcus: By Goldman Sachs,” a moniker that it uses in all marketing materials. The job postings are hosted on Goldman’s career website, rather than the Marcus site, and are included under the firm’s consumer and commercial banking division. Current loan and savings specialists list their employer as Goldman Sachs or Marcus: By Goldman Sachs, rather than just using the retail name.

If you’re looking to get into Goldman via a non-traditional route, Marcus may provide a landing spot, though the division is too new to see the potential for growth opportunities.

Senior-level hires

Of course, Marcus is made up of more than just call center employees. Goldman employs of host of higher-levels staff as analysts, product managers, engineers and managing directors that help oversee Marcus from New York. Employees in these roles have backgrounds that are more typical to banking, both in terms of education and experience.

However, Goldman has filled many of these seats by poaching from financial services companies better known for their credit cards than their traditional retail and investment banking services.

Colin Kennedy, chief operating and revenue officer at Marcus, joined during the Clarity Money acquisition but previously worked for more than a decade at American Express, along with several other senior hires, according to LinkedIn profiles. American Express appears to be a breeding ground for senior Marcus hires.

Meanwhile, Darin Cline, a managing director in charge of operations at Marcus, worked at Capital One and then the Lending Club before joining. Harit Talwar, the company’s head of digital finance under which Marcus operates, came on as a partner in 2015 after a stint at Discover.

Similar positions will likely open up in the U.K. and Germany when and if Goldman expands into Europe. Candidates with digital retail experience – people who may not have been a great fit for Goldman just a few years ago – appear to have a leg up.

Follow @BeecherTuttle

““

Markets may rise and fall. Summit meetings between world leaders may be un-scheduled and then rescheduled. But in a world where so much is uncertain, there is one thing at least that can be relied upon year in and year out: most investment banking analysts will leave for jobs in private equity.

Just how many banking analysts follow this rite of passage? According to data from LongRidge Partners, an executive search firm specializing in the alternative investment industry, around 70% of analysts among the leading investment banks will leave for PE. That translates to around 400-500 each year. By contrast, barely 7% of banking analysts focus on hedge fund opportunities.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that so many follow the path to PE. In many respects it’s simply the most well-lit and well-traveled. Many analysts, though (perhaps most) proceed to this point in their careers almost on auto-pilot. Banking-summer-internship-to-banking-analyst-program-to-PE-associate. But what then? Those PE associate contracts are typically only for two years. According to LongRidge, again, fewer than one in five PE associates remains in PE, while as many as half go to business school (another move that has some hallmarks of the ‘auto-pilot’ effect).

Alternatively, many of them might be better served looking more closely at a career so few were prepared to consider just a couple of years earlier in their careers: equity hedge funds.

Not only do former PE associates bring with them a valuable skillset that translates well to investing in public equities, hedge funds can offer a deeper sense of ownership, early responsibility, and a path to full discretion on investment decisions (i.e., as a PM) that’s hard to come by in PE.

Your work, as a hedge fund analyst, is more focused on the development and pursuit of investment ideas than on managing the administration of a deal process. Responsibility comes early, too, with analysts visiting factories and meeting with senior executives in companies they cover – and asking them penetrating questions about their business. Indeed, at this time of year it’s conference season, when analysts might have the opportunity to sit down face to face with the CEOs of a dozen companies in their coverage over the course of a few days.

In particular, as a hedge fund analyst there is a much greater and more direct sense of attribution than is possible in PE. Put another way, there’s no one else to take the credit and no one else to take the blame. A lot of people like it that way. Indeed, the market itself gives you real-time feedback on the quality of your ideas every day. And while it’s possible to hold positions for a multi-year period, you’re not compelled to; if there’s a superior use available for the capital it can be reallocated very quickly.

At our firm, where the major business is fundamental long/short equity, a number of our investment professionals have followed this journey. In fact, 1 in 5 of our portfolio managers previously spent time in private equity. For investment banking analysts confronted with the question of going to PE or a hedge fund in the future, perhaps more of them will pick ‘both’.

Jonathan Jones is the head of investment talent development at Point72 Asset Management and a former senior recruiter at Blackrock and Goldman Sachs.

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““

August in Paris is usually quiet. The Parisians themselves have followed the sun to beaches further south and the tourists are thronging at the principal sights. Away from the hot spots, cafes are closed and there’s a pervasive ennui: August is not a month for work.

Try telling that to bankers from Goldman Sachs. Summer or not, they are about to arrive in Paris. And they are not known for lazing around.

Richard Gnodde, head of Goldman Sachs International, said yesterday that Goldman plans to move “tens” of London bankers to Paris by the end of this month. In the next three to five years, Goldman plans to double the size of its banking teams in continental Europe, Gnodde told Les Echos, with Paris a city of particular focus.

Naturally, Brexit is to partly blame. Gnodde said he regretted the uncertainty caused by the UK’s decision and that Goldman needs to protect its ability to do business in continental Europe. But Brexit’s not the only perpetrator: Gnodde said Goldman’s reinforcement of the Paris office has its “own logic,” too. French president Emmanuel Macron’s policies have the potential to benefit Goldman’s clients, said Gnodde: they make France a more attractive country for entrepreneurs and large corporations; Paris has become the land of opportunity. It helps that Goldman’s American bankers like Paris: Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein said previously that the enlargement of the Paris office was partly a foil for senior American bankers in London who don’t want to Frankfurt.

60% of Goldman’s staff transfers from London to the EU have happened already, said Gnodde. Goldman’s Paris build includes people working with clients across France, Belgium and Luxembourg, managed by Marc d’Andlau, a Goldman MD previously based out of London. As we have noted several times, Goldman has been building its equity derivatives sales team in Paris.

Paris isn’t the only object of Goldman’s post-Brexit affections. Gnodde said the firm also plans to expand its banking teams in Stockholm, Milan, Madrid and Frankfurt.

Goldman Sachs bankers are about to go local. Whether this means taking a full month off to visit the Mediterranean remains to be seen.

Separately, the Financial Times has identified 16 banks in “bear” territory (ie. their stock is down 20% from its recent peak). They are: Deutsche Bank, Nordea, ICBC, UniCredit, Crédit Agricole, ING, Santander, Société Générale, BNP Paribas, UBS, Agricultural Bank of China, AXA, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Bank of China, Credit Suisse and Prudential Financial. Bankers at these organizations are likely to be suffering from the diminished value of previously deferred bonuses held in the bank’s stock – and may not be able to afford a long summer holiday anyway.

Meanwhile:

Somerset Capital Management, the investment house founded by arch British Brexit supporter Jacob Rees Mogg, has set up a fund in Dublin. (Financial Times)

Morgan Stanley expects to move 400-500 jobs out of the UK as company leaves the European Union. (Bloomberg)

Morgan Stanley is to move its European investment management division from London to Dublin (involving 500 jobs) as it adapts to Brexit. (Citywire)

Morgan Stanley was intending to make $1bn a quarter from its fixed income trading business. After making $1.9bn in the first quarter, it thinks this target may be too modest. (Bloomberg)

Daniel Pinto. head of J.P. Morgan’s corporate and investment bank, says the landscape globally is “very competitive.” : “I think because by now, most banks have adjusted to the new reality, having exited what they wanted to exit and restructured largely what they wanted to restructure…Whatever shift in market share took place in the past (from Europeans to Americans), it’s likely to stabilise because we (as an industry) are no longer in the restructuring mode, we are in the business as usual mode.” (Financial Times)

J.P. Morgan has got a new regional investment group in the U.S. It’s comprised of 60 bankers who help deliver complex underwriting or merger advice typically reserved for larger corporations to smaller clients from regional, including Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, and Chicago. The bank is busy interviewing juniors to fill some of the roles. (Business Insider)

Competitive mindfulness. (WSJ)

Fancy handbag. (BBC)

““

A trader who left Goldman Sachs for Morgan Stanley in December 2017 is understood to have quit Morgan Stanley to return to Goldman.

Julian Naden Robinson, who joined Morgan Stanley in January 2018 as head of Sovereigns, Supranationals and Agencies (SSA) trading, left the U.S. bank last month according to insiders. He’s thought to be returning to GS, where he worked for five years.

Naden Robinson and Goldman Sachs didn’t respond to a request to comment on the move. Naden Robinson wasn’t on Morgan Stanley’s telephone directory when we called. Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Morgan Stanley’s fixed income trading business is capable of big things according to CEO James Gorman, who said this week that the current target of $1bn in quarterly revenues is too little after the bank generated $1.9bn in revenues in the third quarter. Gorman also said that Morgan Stanley’s fixed income trading business is one of its most attractive areas because it stands to see substantial growth if interest rates rise.

Goldman Sachs has been hiring insiders at vice president and executive director level as it seeks to reinvigorate its fixed income trading business. Earlier this year, Goldman suffered various exits from its London macro trading business as senior and junior traders quit for a combination of hedge funds and other banks (particularly Deutsche).

SSA traders deal in bonds issued by organisations working on social or economic public policy initiatives. They include development banks, social security funds. export creditors and infrastructure developers. Naden Robinson has been working in banking since graduating from Oxford University in 2008. As a student he was a keen supporter of the Liberal Democrats, as witnessed by a blog post he wrote on their 2005 conference, which can still be seen here.

““

Deutsche Bank is doing it again. As staff it wants to keep threaten to walk away, it’s reportedly offering substantial inducements to make them stay around.

Various headhunters in London tell us they have tried to lift staff from Deutsche Bank in recent weeks, but that the bank has been offering buy-backs of up to 50% or more to make them stay.

“There are a lot of counteroffers at Deutsche Bank,” says the head of one fixed income search firm, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They’re happy for some people to leave, but will bid-back strongly for staff they value.”

Deutsche Bank is in the process of making 7,000 people redundant across the organisation. Around 5,000 are expected to come from the investment bank and CEO Christian Sewing has said he plans to make the “vast majority” of the front office cuts by July. The bank is understood to have made big cuts to its London credit structuring team last week.

Nonetheless, there are also signs that people are leaving DB of their own volition. Yesterday, for example, Bloomberg reported that Ludovic Cohen, Sean Hammersley, Ben Nixon and Charles Sellem left the bank’s London convertible bond trading team. Rumour has it that they’re off to a combination of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, HSBC (possibly) and an investment fund. Rob Saunders an ex-Irish rugby international who previously ran the team is also understood to have left.

Similarly, Financial News reported today that a team of seven people, including Angelo Haritsis, an ex-Goldman Sachs MD who had been leading Deutsche’s fixed income strats function, has followed Sam Wisnia to hedge fund Eisler Capital.

The fact that Deutsche’s share price is hovering around €9.5 is unlikely to help the German bank retain top staff. Deutsche famously offers its most senior managing directors stock which vests all at once five years after the issuance date. This has historically helped tie people in, but with the share price down 42% since December, recipients may be keener to get that stock bought out by a new employer in case it falls even further. One headhunter said a candidate left even after the buy-back: “They offered a 45% uplift but he left anyway. Some people just want to get out.”

Deutsche Bank declined to comment. In a presentation last week, Sewing highlighted the areas he wants to grow. They include: FX, credit and debt origination. Headhunters said the bank appears to be dumping structurers and moving towards flow credit traders – much like Goldman Sachs.

During that same presentation, Sewing promised not to scrimp on bonuses this year and intimated that the bank may yet offer a new retention package to selected individuals. The previous retention packages, paid in 2017, are only worth something if the bank’s share price hits €23 in early 2021.

““

Commerzbank credit traders quit before Deutsche Bank merger happens

Head of cash equities said to leave Exane BNP despite award success

I gamified my life and got into banking. And now I’m moving on

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Meanwhile:

Work in banking? This man wants to be your boss

Deutsche Bank’s ex-IT executives seem to be doing just fine

How it feels when you’re a client of Goldman Sachs

Morning Coffee: The forgotten senior banker now paying dearly for the financial crisis. Citi’s automation warning for tech and ops jobs

Meanwhile:

Structured credit professionals are back in fashion at Goldman Sachs

2018 is looking good for Goldman Sachs’ fixed income traders

Why it is that women love J.P. Morgan more than Goldman Sachs

The hedge fund job that will give you an easy life. And its downsides

How fintech jobs became boring

Morning Coffee: Hedge fund manager warns that big wealth could damage your health. Blackrock’s plan for world dominance

Senior investment bankers dumped as 2018 turns sour

Can’t code and want to stay in finance? This ex-Citi MD has a plan

How to get a job at Goldman Sachs with no degree and a background in face-painting

This is why hedge funds are better than private equity for M&A analysts

Morning Coffee: Goldman Sachs bankers are going to Paris for the summer. The big banks in bear territory

Meanwhile:

Trader who quit Goldman Sachs for Morgan Stanley is back 6 months later

Big buybacks are back at Deutsche as valued staff leave

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